Tangled Tango of the Broken Comb
by RyoMaybe
Summary: The world of tomorrow has forgotten the nightmares of days long past. Yet youkai still roam the land, where the ancient forests have become mere illusions painted over the surface of dull condos. Youkai like Oogami Hari, who clings to her ephemeral existence in a daily struggle to survive, pay the rent and gain followers on her Instagram page.


When the door slams open, the digital clock is flashing a bright red "20:00″ within the broken darkness. Light pours in briefly, before Hari shuts the entrance in its metaphorical face and triggers the switch: she already has her own perfectly functional lightbulbs, stay out in the corridor and bother the neighbors instead, thank _you_. That said, the switch flips back to its initial position, arising in proximity of the "OFF" painted underneath it. Then it's back to the "ON" on the opposite side, OFF again, ON? No, it's OFF once more. It goes on for a matter of seconds that nears a decent dozen of them, before Hari finally settles on, well, _ON_ , but she doesn't seem satisfied with the choice and her thin fingers linger over the slave-driven switch for a silent moment longer. No, okay, let's keep the lights on. At least until I dump the groceries where they belong.

She calls them groceries, because mad people tend to paint reality with many layers of similar baloney: as long as she brought them home in a shopping bag that was about to burst halfway there, Hari reasons, approximately thirteen kilograms and a half of sweet potatoes _do_ count as "groceries". Domestic as a majestic _fuck_. The cargo, the shipment of veggies, the - can you believe this - the _groceries_ , she dumps them over the table. Those vestigial remains of a kotatsu, which broke long enough ago that Hari worries she'll have to pay rent for two any day now. Maybe the additional expense will be worth it, if it turns out that cuddling a _broken heater tsukumogami_ that crawled out of an obsolete kotatsu provides some form of warmth during the winter. For now, the most advanced form of heating that thing can provide is a thick blanket, which has just become a depository of those sweet potatoes that, she promises to herself, she _will_ move into a cupboard tomorrow. Or into a corner. Yeah, good luck with that: out of four of them, three are respectively housing a plastic potted plant (which somehow manages to look dead by neglection despite being a fake), a bag - plastic that one too, except more healthy-looking than the plant - chock-full of garbage ( _DAMMIT DAMMIT FORGOT TO BRING THE GARBAGE OUT AGAIN AAA_ ), and the lamp that's currently shedding light on the single-room apartment, along with the situation. Which is a dire one - in other words, it's business as usual.

The fourth corner, by the way, is occupied by the bed. _Bed_ , in Hari-speak, means "mattress flopping on the ground in a somewhat pitiful way, as if awaiting the heat death of the universe". What would annoy her the most about this description is that she would find it more relatable than she'd wish to admit. Anyway, the potatoes are down, like her, like her life, like the gar–OH NO THE GARBAGE, THE LANDLADY IS GOING TO KILL ME–she can bring it out _later_ , no need to panic. Dinner? Let's see… no, she's good. I mean, she will definitely regret having ruined her appetite with that parfait, but what the hell! She can well indulge a bit every now and then, no? Yeah, indulgence, woo-hoo! Yeeeah she better get to work now unless she wants to wake up starving to death tomorrow. Let's sit down and–hey, hey, don't be a slob: shoes off and on the shelf. It's your home, have a bit of respect. There you go… feels good, acting like a normal, decent person, mh? _Acting_ 's the magic word here, because it implies falsehood. It fits her far too well.

Speaking of fitting, oooh, how she missed her pretty pillowy-poo! Gosh, I can't believe she _really_ called it that. Look, she's even stopped to make sure that nobody is staring at her, like they'd be justified to do after hearing her coo the worst petname ever uttered towards a piece of furniture. Nobody? Phew. Good thing the only window's covered up. By the way, have you considered moving those ridiculous anime posters elsewhere? No? Alright, your home, your choice. Make yourself comfortable on your pillowy-p… your _pillow_ , your legs will thank you for it. Aah dang, look at them! If they weren't so tired from all that walking today, the'd be kicking with excitement. Which, considering they're stretched under the kotatsu, would end up further damaging the latter, and causing sweet potatoes to fall and roll all over the floor, as if _that_ isn't already littered as is. It's a wonder you didn't trip over a single one of those empty shampoo bottle… you must have more of those than followers on your blog. Hey, that could be a good idea! _Send me a message, and I'll post a picture of what kind of shampoo I think you'd be…_ perfect. Absolutely magnificent. The smile spreads so eagerly on Hari's face, you'd be tricked into believing she was a kuchisake-onna. That would make selfies pretty awkward, but it would probably mean saving a _lot_ on haircare products.

Let she tell it like it is: being a harionago is suffering.

Right, right, blogging time. Come on, won't this stupid lappy turn on already? It's been months since she's planned to start looking into purchasing a new one - she just has to think of a way to actually _pay_ for it. Maybe when her boss will _finally_ trust her with doing more than sweep a bunch of greasy, freshly cut-off hair from the floor and let her do the cutting part already, _dammit_. Apprenticeship can only go on for so long - and pay so much. She wants to do the real thing! That's the whole reason she applied for that job at the hair-stylist boutique! To _style hair_. **Her whole point literally** _ **is**_ **hair.** People say the world has gone mad nowadays, but Hari knows better: the case isn't that it's gone mad, it's that some people are maddeningly _stupid_.

Speaking of which, the damn machine has booted up at last. Praise be Nurarihyon-sama! Let's check the activity feed… _heheh, feed_. Never fails to crack her up, the goon. Every single time, stifling that giggle that escapes her with a snort and fills the room with noise and a volumetric ton of lonely, pathetic sadness. Right… well, not too bad, quite a number of notes. Not quite _triple digits_ , but it should be enough to go on for a couple of days. Friday's picture seems to have been particularly successful, with a whole 27 Likes alone. Can't blame them, really: she spent half the day finding the right angle to pass the park near the station off as Aokigahara. The weather helped too, at least until it started raining. But all that gray and the sickly trees, woah! Hari has to admit it: she really took a great shot. It really looks like she's standing and smiling sweetly in the middle of a popular suicide ground.

So far, so good. As long as even those few souls recognize her existence, she can stand feeling like her bones are made of papiermache six days a week. That's more than others in her position could say, since most can't afford enough energy to even _speak_. Like Kaori, the nopperabou.

How miserable. Playing the living mannequin in a clothing store, just to keep going.

Still, it's courageous of her to have kept her dignity. Not like Osui, that _slut_. Oh yes, that's right! Hari told her right in her face (well, right in her _chatroom_ , anonymously, but the act still stands). Just because you're a kejorou doesn't make you any less of a S-L-U-T for camwhoring. Yeah, Hari told her, alright! Who needs fifty-thousand daily views feeding you more existence than you'd ever need, when you have **dignity**?

She was banned shortly after the episode, by the by.

Anyway, after having uploaded today's batch of pictures (including a particularly charming one taken in the dark alley behind Saize), it's time to look up _that_. When she writes the URL into the browser bar, Hari doesn't press the Enter button with a lot of enthusiasm: the chatroom is hardly one of the most frequented ones nowadays, which is no wonder. Occultism doesn't pay for the bills, for instance, nor does it help kids prepare for their exams. The diehard fans nonetheless keep their work up (even if they've yet to even find out about her, despite her attempts at catching their attention), and her hopes along with it - trusting a bunch of strangers on the Internet with finding out a particularly vital bit of info for her has as many chances of success as she has of breaking the fourth digit in her Instagram's follower counter.

Sure enough, no juicy bits today either. The usual talk about this sighting or that rumor, inconcrete breezes scattering across a gigantic mountain of disappointment. There's the fact that any of those shades, of those fleeting illusions that these men and women claim to have witnessed, could be her own kind, breathing their last in a world that wishes to forget them. Hari doesn't remember when she stopped caring about that possibility; she isn't about to start doing so again anytime soon, either. Right now, all she feels is the urge to sigh and shake her head. The X lights up under her pointy cursor, about to bring down the ax on today's brief session of self-fulfilling browsing and send her to sleep a dreamless night, when something at the edge of the chat window captures her gaze at the last second.

 _VIOLET [20:37]: gosh fml today went from good to terribad. i dont wanna hear bout no gensokyos for the rest of the year -_-''''_

Something lights up in Hari's unnaturally blue eyes. It's a pop up that devours the screen for a brief moment, alerting her that DOCTORS HATE HER - LEARN HER SECRET TO GROW THE THICKEST SEXIEST EYEBROWS before she can kill it with a cold-blooded click. Before she knows it, a private chat has been opened with this _VIOLET_ person and her fingers are dancing across the keyboard with the grace of a ballet star performing in front of the greatest public.

Maybe this is it, she thinks to herself. And as the minutes pass and the girl on the other side of the conversation recounts her experience in a "supah scaaary place full of wackos _!1″, the eventuality that she might be about to leave this life behind herself for good becomes little more than the only illusion more faded than her own existence.

It becomes a real, awaited _chance._


End file.
